A Mumbai-based female HR executive was murdered in her hotel room in Bengaluru last weekend in a shocking incident. The 33-year-old executive travelled to Bengaluru from Mumbai and was staying at the Crest hotel in the IT hub of Whitefield. The police have arrested a suspect in the case.
Rajitha Kadappuram, a native of Kerala, is suspected to have been murdered between February 8 and 9 by one of the hotel staff. She used to stay in the hotel, located on the seventh floor of Prestige Shantiniketan in ITPL road, Whitefield, whenever she visited Bengaluru for work.
The arrested person is Laishram Hemba Singh, a laundry staff of the hotel. Singh, who hails from Manipur, is a resident of Kadugodi and has confessed to his crime. The motive behind the murder is yet to be known. The hotel employees were the first to report the murder to the Kadugodi police on February 9, after they suspected some foul play as they were unable to contact Rajitha. There was a do not disturb sign on her door. The staff opened the room with a spare key and found her lying dead inside the bedroom.
Rajitha's body was shifted to Vydehi medical college hospital in Whitefield for post-mortem and the police reported a case of unnatural death. At first, it was taken as a case of suicide, but later the autopsy report said that she had sustained head injuries and was smothered. "The provisional opinion is that the cause of death is due to the combined effect of smothering and a head injury sustained", the report said, according to TOI.
According to the police, Rajitha must have been killed between 8.30 pm on February 8 and 4.30 pm on February 9, when her lifeless body was discovered by the staff. Rajitha was employed with a private firm, Helma India Pvt. Ltd. as an HR executive and admin officer. She used to work for 15 days at the Mumbai office and the remainder of the month at its Bengaluru office. She used to stay at Crest during her visit to the city. Her husband is an airline employee working in the UK and she used to live with her parents in Mumbai.
